


101 Uses for Cornstarch (Culinary or Otherwise)

by renaissance



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, M/M, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 08:59:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4823024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>If there are method actors, then there can be method <i>writers</i>, and Ennoshita will be damned if he writes a screenplay where two people fall in love in a coffee shop without first falling in love in a coffee shop himself.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	101 Uses for Cornstarch (Culinary or Otherwise)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hananapeel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hananapeel/gifts).



> Hey Hanana! This is a bit of a better-late-than-never, but this is a pinch hit for you for the Haikyuu!! Summer Holiday exchange! It loses a bit of the fun of anonymity this way, but I'm glad to at least be able to give you a fic in exchange for the wonderful one you wrote. I was pretty excited to be asked recently to pinch hit for your prompts, tbh, so I hope you enjoy this :D
> 
> General notes: the prompt was ennofuta+coffee shop AU, which, uh, don't let me play around with filmmaker!Ennoshita, things get meta and out of hand. As a result, this is basically genre deconstruction for the coffee shop AU, with a bit of an exploration of the meet-cute/meet-ugly thrown in for good measure. It's also a bit of a shameless romcom. I have no regrets.
> 
> Quick thanks to Ideas Viv, as always, for the beta++, and to Shaye for talking the idea over with me and helping me finalise the structure of this fic!

Narita has this habit of tapping his index finger against his thumb when he’s annoyed. It doesn’t make a noise, but it’s still frustrating. Kinoshita, on the other hand, is noisy when he’s impatient, clicking his heels against the floor, clearing his throat. Ennoshita knows that the fact that they’re respectively annoyed and impatient is entirely his fault, but it doesn’t make their annoyance any less annoying.

 _Apparently_ , Ennoshita’s developed a very annoying habit. But if there are method actors, then there can be method _writers_ , and Ennoshita will be damned if he writes a screenplay where two people fall in love in a coffee shop without first falling in love in a coffee shop himself.

It’s for his final grade; the stimulus is to make something mundane into something magical, and Ennoshita can think of nothing more mundane than a coffee shop. He started in the campus coffee shop he frequents every morning before class, but it didn’t work. He knew all the baristas too well, and it would have been ridiculous to fall in love with any of them. So, he started branching out, trying different coffee shops and different drinks. He hasn’t fallen in love yet, but there’s still time.

“This’ll be the one,” he tells Kinoshita and Narita. “I heard the barista’s very cute.”

They’ve been at their table for less than two minutes when the barista emerges from behind the tricked-out coffee machine, stacked high with bags of coffee beans, and he’s certainly not what Ennoshita expected.

“Well,” Kinoshita says, “he’s tall.”

“Be kind,” Narita says. “Some people might say a six-foot-plus thug with bleached hair and no eyebrows is… cute.”

“Who recommended this place to you?” Kinoshita asks.

“Some girls in my photography class,” Ennoshita says. “Anyway, he’s good-looking. Doesn’t have to be cute to be handsome. I’ll give it a shot.”

“You’re so desperate it’s pathetic,” Kinoshita says.

“Do you even _want_ a relationship?” Narita asks.

Ennoshita narrows his eyes at them. “Would I be doing this if I didn’t?”

“Would he be making stupid romcoms if he didn’t?” Kinoshita mumbles.

Ennoshita gracefully decides to ignore that comment—if he got riled up every time Kinoshita made some crack about his screenplay ideas, he’d have smoke coming out of his ears. He can’t help it that he’s moved on. In high school, all he made were stupid fantasy and horror movies. Now that he’s older he’s seen the light, and there is nothing more fulfilling than a well-executed romantic comedy. So, he pulls his chair out from under the table and takes his copy of the menu in one hand.

“I’m going to order,” he says. “Anything for you two?”

“Please,” Narita says, “no more coffee.”

Up at the counter, there’s an impressive display of baked goods: everything from elaborate tiered cakes to tiny cupcakes with digits painstakingly iced onto them.

There’s a short guy behind the counter—Sakunami, by his nametag—and he looks up when he sees Ennoshita approach. “Can I get you anything?”

“Just an espresso,” Ennoshita says. “Hey, what’s the deal with the number cupcakes?”

“Oh!” Sakunami exclaims, his eyes darting to the shelf. “They’re for birthdays. We put them on the bigger cakes in general, but you’re more than welcome to order them on their own.”

“Okay,” Ennoshita says. “Could I get two ones and a two?”

Sakunami looks at Ennoshita strangely, but he obliges, and opens the cabinet with the cakes. While he’s doing that, Ennoshita turns to the barista, who isn’t wearing a nametag. “That’s an impressive coffee machine,” he says.

It’s not much of a pick-up, but it catches the barista’s attention. “It’s new,” the barista says. Ennoshita waits for something else, but he doesn’t elaborate.

“Alright,” Ennoshita says. The taciturn type, huh? He can work with that. “You’ve worked here a while, I guess.”

The barista nods.

”Your cupcakes,” Sakunami says, handing across a plate to Ennoshita.

“Thanks,” Ennoshita says, putting the plate down as he gets out his wallet. He’d feel bad for stalling if this place were busy, but it’s surprisingly quiet for such a nice joint.

As Sakunami gets change, Ennoshita turns back to the barista. “So is it easy work? Or would it be easier with a helping hand?”

The barista shrugs, finishing up with Ennoshita’s coffee. “I like it.”

“Right,” Ennoshita says, “but sometimes it’s easier with someone else there. You know, like—”

He pauses, gesturing to the plate. The two is nestled between the ones, and Ennoshita quickly swaps it around.

“—one plus one equals two,” he finishes lamely.

As the barista gives Ennoshita a blank look and Sakunami hands him the change with a sympathetic smile, Ennoshita feels like he was destined to fail before he’d even begun. This is something like the seventh coffee shop he’s tried to fall in love in, and it’s a lost cause. Of course, this means the backup plan, which is just going back to his roots and making a modern fantasy film.

“Your espresso,” the barista says.

Ennoshita thanks him weakly. He’s giving up. He feels almost numb as the realisation that he’s failed sinks in. As his hands close around the cup of coffee, though, it’s hotter than he expects, and he fumbles it with a gasp. He catches the cup before it can fall and shatter, but a second is all it takes for it to pour its contents all over his nice new shirt.

The expletives he yells can probably be heard several streets over.

Kinoshita and Narita are at the counter in seconds, and Ennoshita tries to brush them off with an “It’s fine!”

In every disaster, there’s also opportunity. Ennoshita’s scheme finds a second lease on life.

“I’m going to have to change,” he says, flapping his shirt away from his chest to minimise the heat. He looks at the barista. “Maybe you can show me to the bathroom?”

“Oh my god,” Kinoshita says, “I can’t believe you’re a real human who actually exists and thinks that, at a time like this—”

“The bathroom’s just to the left, behind the counter,” Sakunami says helpfully.

Ennoshita tries not to let his face fall too much. “Yeah. Of course,” he says, to the tune of Kinoshita snickering in the background, and Narita’s barely-restrained laughs.

That could have gone better—in hindsight, trying to flirt while covered with scalding hot coffee wasn’t the best move. It’s getting uncomfortable, too, so as Ennoshita nears the end of the corridor leading away from the front counter, around the back of the café’s kitchen but out of sight of the few cooks, he pulls his shirt off and bundles it in his hands to wring out in the bathroom sink.

Only, when he opens the door to the bathroom, there’s a ghost standing in front of him.

This time, Ennoshita doesn’t yell, because a second later the ghost resolves into a man covered entirely in flour, his own shirt ascending over his head like a bedsheet ghost costume and straight into the sink Ennoshita was intending to use.

“Um,” the flour ghost says, colour flooding his face and taking away from the effect a bit.

“Dropped my coffee,” Ennoshita says, unfurling his shirt and holding it out in explanation.

“That explains the loud swearing,” the flour-covered man says. “But you know, I’m pretty sure I can be fired for being half-naked in the bathroom with a good-looking—”

He stops, pulling an objectively ugly face.

Ennoshita is, subjectively, smitten.

“Sorry to intrude,” he says. “I was having a bit of a disaster day, and I needed to get my shirt off before I did something more hazardous than spilling coffee all over myself.”

“More hazardous than flirting with a stranger in a café bathroom?”

Actually, the stranger’s flour incident seems a little more hazardous than the flirting, but Ennoshita’s willing to let it go. “Ah,” he says, definitely _not_ flirting, “then I should introduce myself so I’m not a stranger any longer. I’m Ennoshita Chikara.”

“Futakuchi Kenji,” he says. “I’m a baker here. Hence the, uh, bag of cornstarch that fell on my head.”

Futakuchi wipes a hand across his face, and—oh _no_ —under the layers of what is apparently cornstarch, he is _really_ attractive. He extends the same hand and, when they meet to shake, Ennoshita’s hand becomes sticky with sweat and cornstarch.

“Oh, shit,” Futakuchi says, withdrawing his hand, “sorry.” He wipes his hand on his checked chef’s pants first, but there’s more cornstarch there, so he switches to his bare chest. Ennoshita had not envisioned his cinema-perfect meet-cute as watching someone rub cornstarch onto their chest in a café bathroom with barely enough standing room between the sink and the two toilet cubicles, one of which has an apron slung over the door.

“It’s fine,” Ennoshita says, laughing a bit nervously.

“Let’s try that again,” Futakuchi says.

“Let’s maybe not,” Ennoshita suggests.

Futakuchi looks down at his cornstarchy hands. “Oh, right, yeah,” he says.

“Um, when you’re done,” Ennoshita says, “can I use the sink?”

The tap is dripping a bit, and Futakuchi’s shirt is hanging off the edge of the sink. Bit by bit, Ennoshita is feeling better about himself, and about how this morning’s turned out. After all, he thinks, his magical-mundane coffee shop romcom doesn’t need a barista as the love interest. In fact, there’s something _unique_ about making the love interest a baker.

“Sure,” Futakuchi says. “You’re not gonna go back out there in a wet shirt, though, are you?”

Ennoshita shrugs. “What are my other options?”

“Just a second,” Futakuchi says. “I’ve got a spare shirt in my bag.”

Before Ennoshita can respond, Futakuchi’s out of the bathroom. When he comes back and hangs the spare shirt over the cubicle door next to his apron, Ennoshita clears his throat. “What will you wear?”

Futakuchi turns around to face Ennoshita, blinking. “I can just dust the cornstarch off my shirt. It’s fine. I’ll have my apron on, anyway.”

He retrieves his shirt from the sink and puts it back on, as though he’s proving a point, but it just stirs up the cornstarch like dust in the air, and there’s a huge wet spot right in the middle from the dripping tap.

“It’s fine,” Futakuchi says again.

Ennoshita sighs through a laugh as he takes the sink and starts running the tap over his shirt. The coffee starts to run out and into the sink, turning the porcelain temporarily brown. “This is a mess,” he mutters to himself.

“Want to talk about it?” Futakuchi asks. “I mean, if you’ve had a bad morning, getting it off your chest can help. Literally, in this case.”

This time, Ennoshita lets himself laugh out loud. “You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“Probably,” he says breezily, “but if I laugh I give you full permission to splash me with some of that gross coffee-coloured water.”

“Well,” Ennoshita says, fully prepared for derision, “I came here to do some research for a screenplay I need to write for a course I’m taking at uni. I dragged my friends with too, which was probably a bad idea, because all they’ve done is laugh at me, but I feel a bit weird trawling my way through the coffee shops of the city on my own.”

“What sort of films can you research in a coffee shop?” Futakuchi asks.

Ennoshita breathes in deep. “Romantic comedies.”

Instead of laughing, Futakuchi grins a little slyly. “I get it,” he says. “The kind where a coffee shop regular shows up one day to find a cute new barista behind the coffee machine. There’s flirting, numbers on take-away cups, that sort of thing—right?”

The breath that Ennoshita was holding makes its way out all out once, sharp to compensate for the words he can’t quite string together, not for a few more moments. “Yeah,” he says, “that sort of thing.”

“Did you try flirting with Aone?” Futakuchi asks. “Oh my god, that’d be—”

“Yeah, I did,” Ennoshita admits, guessing that Aone’s the barista.

“— _hilarious_ ,” Futakuchi finishes. “He’s really shy, though.”

“I gathered,” Ennoshita says, turning off the tap and wringing his shirt dry. “Lucky I found you instead.”

The moment the words leave his mouth, he regrets it. Usually he has a very good brain-to-mouth filter. Apparently, that filter disappears when he’s shirtless.

Futakuchi takes it in his stride. “Yeah, you are lucky,” he says, “given how strikingly handsome I am.”

“I don’t even know what colour your hair is,” Ennoshita jokes.

With a start, Futakuchi brings his hands up to his hair and fluffs it up, the cornstarch clouding around him like a halo. When it dissipates, Ennoshita can make out that his hair is a light brown.

“Better?” Futakuchi asks.

“Yeah,” Ennoshita says, pursing his lips just in case his filter slips again. When he’s sure of what he’ll say next, he lets himself continue. “You don’t mind if I write a screenplay based on this encounter, do you?”

“On one condition: you let me play myself,” Futakuchi says. “I’ve always wanted to be a movie star.”

“It’s just for uni,” Ennoshita says.

Futakuchi reaches for his spare shirt and hands it to Ennoshita. “I don’t mind.”

Leaving his own shirt hanging off the edge of the sink, Ennoshita pulls on Futakuchi’s spare one. It’s a bit big, so he tucks a corner into his jeans.

“Suits you,” Futakuchi says, “but I’m not letting you keep it. How about you swing by tomorrow and drop it off?”

“How’s tomorrow afternoon?” Ennoshita asks. “That gives me time to wash and dry it.”

“Whoa, so much effort,” Futakuchi says. “Okay, in return I’ll keep your shirt and get rid of the stain in one of our industrial dishwashers.”

“I’m not sure that’s safe,” Ennoshita says, hastily taking the shirt from the sink. It had been brand new, after all.

Futakuchi rolls his eyes. “Boring.”

Now that it’s happened—the meet-cute, the spark of an idea, the beginning of the story that’s already forming in Ennoshita’s head, the screenplay that’ll get him a top grade—he’s overcome with the slightly frightening realisation that he may accidentally have secured a _real_ date in the process. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says quickly.

“Yeah,” Futakuchi says. “See you then.”

When Ennoshita gets back down the corridor, out from behind the counter, and to his table, Kinoshita gives him a _look_.

“What?”

“Your shirt,” Kinoshita says, “is not your shirt.”

“Oh,” Ennoshita says, colouring a bit, “I, uh, it’s a long story, there was a baker in the bathroom and he lent me his—”

“That explains what took you so long, I guess,” Narita says. “What was he doing there?”

“He got covered in cornstarch,” Ennoshita explains.

Narita and Kinoshita don’t seem convinced. “Did you at least flirt with him a bit?” Kinoshita asks. “Get some _research_ done?”

“Can we stop going to coffee shops at last?” Narita adds quietly.

Ennoshita pushes back the nerves and lets his face settle in what he hopes is a suitably smug expression. “Yeah,” he says, “I think I’ve definitely got enough for this screenplay.”

“Thank god,” Kinoshita says.

A second later, Sakunami comes to their table with the cupcakes from earlier, plus a few more on the plate. “Don’t worry,” he says, “the extra ones are free, courtesy of the in-house bakery. Are you feeling better?”

“I am,” Ennoshita says. “Thanks.”

Sakunami smiles. “That’s alright! I just hope this incident hasn’t put you off our establishment—”

“Ah, no,” Ennoshita says, cutting him off quickly. “Quite the opposite.”

As Sakunami heads back to the counter, Narita leans over Ennoshita’s shoulder. “You know, there are enough numbers on these cupcakes to form a—”

“—a phone number,” Kinoshita completes. “Holy shit, Ennoshita, you’ve _scored_.”

Ennoshita can’t help the stupid grin that spreads across his face. “Now,” he says, “the plot thickens.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment to me and/or yell with me about metafiction :V


End file.
